"Lesson" - by Forrest Hamer

 

"Lesson" *
by Forrest Hamer ==== /// ====

It was 1963 or 4, summer,
and my father was driving our family
from Ft. Hood to North Carolina in our 56 Buick.
We'd been hearing about Klan attacks, and we knew

Mississippi to be more dangerous than usual.
Dark lay hanging from the trees the way moss did,
and when it moaned light against the windows 
that night, my father pulled off the road to sleep.

Noises
that usually woke me from rest afraid of monsters 
kept my father awake that night, too, 
and I lay in the quiet noticing him listen, learning
that he might not be able always to protect us

from everything and the creatures besides;
perhaps not even from the fury suddenly loud
through my body about his trip from Texas
to settle us home before he would go away

to a place no place in the world
he named Viet Nam. A boy needs a father
with him, I kept thinking, fixed against noise
from the dark.

________________________________________

* Copyright 1995 by Forrest Hamer
 

Coexistence - by TPO

Coexistence

- by TPO -

In a time of difficulties back in the 1930s, an Italian photographer saw something which he had never seen anywhere else but in Ethiopia and was very much surprised: Muslims and Christians praying together.
 

After a little conversation with the locals he documented his unique experience in pictures. 

The picture was later published by Richard Pankhurst and Denis Gerard.
 

The photo caption read: “At St George’s Cathedral, Addis Ababa, Christians and Muslim’s praying together for peace.”
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Coexistence: (noun) a policy of living peacefully with other nations, religions, etc., despite fundamental disagreements.
source: Dictionary.com